At the end of September 2024, a three-day international academic forum took place in Nuremberg (Germany), organised by the department of ‘Religious Education and Didactics of Protestant Religious Education’ at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. The representative of PILGRIM at CoGREE, Michael Holzwieser from the University College of Agrarian and Environmental Pedagogy (Vienna; https://haup.ac.at), held a workshop raising the question “How to deal with a ‘pressure to act’ facing ecological issues when teaching?”. This topic is urgent for many young people, as the “last generation” movement expresses the urgency in its naming. By the way, these movements were partly seen as a prophetic voice or as a sign of the time, that needs to be evaluated from a Christian point of view.
The workshop followed the thesis that value education and spirituality can contribute well to constructivist didactics of ESD. The spirituality of a ‘Theology of Creation’ was applied to a case study and the terms of spirituality, care for creation and official texts were discussed.
The PILGRIM concept combines the spiritual, ethical, and religious dimensions with Education of Sustainable Development and was mentioned as a best practice example. The participants found the Nuremberg Forum to be very profitable.
Memorandum on “Education for Sustainable Development – Spiritual Dimensions”
An interesting output of the Forum is the Memorandum. As a result of the three days at the Forum, it is a statement on what ESD, spirituality and the contribution of religion to ESD is.
Michael Holzwieser